Opportunities for D

[H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d]

On Thu, Jul 10, 2014 at 07:30:42AM -0700, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
[...]
> Looking at the second oldest pull request
> (https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/1138) that's
> just a documentation pull, on which I myself last asked about status
> on March 15.

Sorry, I got busy and didn't have time to look at it. I just updated it
per the latest comments; please review.


> Furthermore there are just a good amount of pull requests that have
> nothing to do with any leadership. E.g.
> https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/1527 is some
> apparently work that's just sitting there abandoned.

Perhaps somebody should take over this pull (fork it or copy-n-paste,
whatever). I haven't used std.net.curl since that last time, and likely
won't be using it anytime soon because I find the API hard to use -- for
my needs, using std.process to call wget/curl is good enough. So I'm
probably not the best person to work on the API right now.

And just for the record, I have no problem whatsoever with people taking
over my PRs and submitting their own PRs with identical content. What's
important is that the code gets in there somehow.


[...]
> Of course that doesn't undo the fact that Walter and I are on hook for
> a number of things. What I'm saying is I disagree with the allegation
> that "no amount of volunteer effort will help". From the looks of
> things, we're in dire need of volunteer effort.
[...]

Since we're on this topic, I wish somebody would review this PR:

	https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/2276

There have been multiple usability bugs filed against cartesianProduct,
and this PR addresses the most common use case (which is also the
simplest to fix) in those complaints. Some of these bugs have been
around for a while, and only recently have I found the time to actually
do something about it... only to get ignored. Other than some comments
from bearophile, I've seen no comments from anyone else, and it's been
almost 2 weeks, so right now I don't even know what else to do.

I suspect this is one of the problems (perceived or otherwise) with the
current PR process. A lot of work is just sitting there without even an
acknowledgement from a bystander, so to speak, and the few that do get
some attention, after comments have been addressed, continue to sit
there with no indication of whether the change is unacceptable, or
uninteresting, or interesting but people are too busy to look at it, or
what. Sometimes I just stare at the PR page day after day asking, is
something missing? Do people expect any other changes?  Are people too
busy to even look at it? Even a casual remark as "I'll get around to
this on the weekend (or next month, or, for that matter, next *year*)"
would help bolster morale significantly. Letting things sit in limbo
without so much as a comment, says, intentionally or not, that we just
don't care, and that's very discouraging to potential contributors.

Now I'm not saying this with any bitterness, and, having a full-time job
myself plus countless other responsibilities with family, etc., I
totally understand that sometimes people are just too busy to respond.
Or sometimes a PR is just beyond your depth and you don't really want to
get involved for fear of saying things or making decisions that you
aren't qualified to make.  But judging at the frequency of non-response
to PRs, I'm starting to wonder if we, as a community, have bitten off a
far bigger chunk than we can chew, in the sense that Phobos covers a
huge scope of very different things, yet there aren't enough people
interested / qualified in each specific area to be able to review / pull
PRs directed at that area in a timely manner. Perhaps we're becoming the
jack of all trades and master of one, so to speak?


T

-- 
He who sacrifices functionality for ease of use, loses both and deserves neither. -- Slashdotter